Sister Sib’s benevolent Nascar Guy comes from a place much like Butcher Holler where family ties are unbreakable bonds. So when an elderly aunt was being moved in with her only son who lives in CA to be cared for through yet another round of chemo – Nascar Guy raised his hand. He’d be the one to sort through her belongings…things she’d collected since forever…things held on to since her husband’s death some 16 years ago… You get the picture. Two weeks working full-time sorting, tossing, donating – they were finally ready for the auction. The vultures swooped in – left their dollar droppings and flew away with their prey. Now the empty nest of a house stands picked clean and ready for it’s next flock to begin padding it with feathers,twigs and mud.

Hearing how someone had to come in and paw through a life-time of possessions, assigning values to each and every thing, got me thinking about the “stuff” of my life. Until you’ve had to do a job like that, I’m not sure you can appreciate the emotions that bubble up regardless of whether or not the items are yours, a family friend’s or a family member’s.

It seems like things come in and take up residence in our homes alot easier than they go out. Memories put a patina on things like layered years of fingerprints. We sentimental types have a hard time sending our souls out the door with no one to voice the journey of how this thing came to be part of our story. Presently, my offspring seem to have very little interest in the stuff that has served as set decoration for our collective lives up until this point. Frankly, I admire that about both of them. They hold things loosely. Maybe it was because in the chaos of our gypsy caravan lifestyle, we knew we HAD certain things – but we’d be hard pressed to know WHERE they were. They are on their own adventures now, collecting trinkets that speak to their particular journeys. So I feel like I want to strike while the iron is hot. I want to send things out of this house like smoke being belched up through the chimney. There’s plenty of tchotchke to use as kindling.

I’m thinking that I’d like to “shop” my own home this year for gift-giving. Brown is my new favorite Christmas color. Recycle, reuse, repurpose, re-gift – all wrapped in thick, rough brown Kraft paper. Maybe I’ll host a Swap Party. Set things out on the table – invite people in – and let them take what they please but it only goes one way. OUT.

A couple of members of Shop Girl’s backing band recently got married. Being young hippie types, they mandated that all wedding gifts had to be used and/ or purchased from a resale shop. I could single-handedly outfit their entire house and mine would NOT look bare at all. I thought about an old oak table leaning against the chimney down in the basement. It had grown too small and was replaced by a larger second-hand purchase. I gladly bequethed it to a new nest where their kids would grow up laughing around meals, spilling milk, fighting over games and doing homework. That table has no soul but stories? Yes.

The table can’t tell those stories. Those memories aren’t erased just because I’m not looking at the table. I hadn’t actually looked at the table for years and I’d still not forgotten the times we shared around it’s gently rounded edges. So I’m determining to spend the long days/nights of winter digging through more stuff. It’s my stuff. It’s my job.